fnnd

the 3D printer that can build a house

So imagine designing your own dream house, what would you say if a builder came to you and said he could deliver you a 2500 sq foot house in 24 hours?

What if your friendly builder said he could skip past the weeks and months of waiting for materials to be delivered and trying to steal moments of construction in between spurts of bad weather?

What if he said he could printout your house?

Well the researchers at California university reckon you’ll be pretty interested in that prospect. So much so that they have developed a new layered technology 3d printer called contour crafting.
Up to now, 3d printers use thermal plastics that harden but this uses concrete in layers to construct straight or curved walls, even domes.

The man behind this idea, Mr Koshenevis, said that everything is being made by computers and machines but not buildings and he wants to bring that technology to urban construction.

The advanced process is actually quite simple: a computer program guides a giant robot with a delivery nozzle on a flexible arm and gantry-type crane. It then proceeds to layer concrete based on the architect’s pattern. The layered material will eventually take shape into walls, with the same gaps a standard construction plan would allow for plumbing, windows or even chimneys.

Contour Crafting could be a critical tool with regards to quickly building structures in booming urban areas, the website states, or, should the opportunity arise, locales that are a bit more out of this world. The scientists involved say that they’ve conducted research that could be used to put 3D-printed homes eventually on other planets, and claim that “Contour Crafting will most probably be one of the very few feasible approaches for building structures on the Moon and Mars, which are being targeted for human colonization before the end of the new century.” Khoshnevis even says materials mined from the lunar surface could be used to create these homes. It’s a loony idea… But it might just work